Where is Rainier project headed?

The Rainier cross-town connector and interchange has a funding plan, a traffic study showing it will relieve future congestion and $10 million allocated to it in the city’s redevelopment budget.

Five years ago, it received the backing of 72 percent of Petaluma voters, who passed an advisory measure calling for the city to “pursue the design, environmental analysis, funding and construction” of the project.

What is doesn’t yet have, however, is final approval from state transportation officials.

Backers of the long-planned and sometimes-contentious project hope a key report on the feasibility of a new freeway interchange at Rainier Avenue will move the proposal closer to reality.

But when that report, first ordered in 2007, will be unveiled to the public is not yet known. It is being prepared by a transportation consultant, at the city’s cost, and must be approved by Caltrans.

Called a Project Study Report, the document is a detailed look at the cost, schedule and scope of proposed freeway projects, and is generally required as part of Caltrans’ approval process.

When the council voted to spend $449,000 in June 2007 to conduct the report, its findings were expected in about a year’s time.

In late 2007, the council voted to support what’s called a “design exception” allowing the new interchange to be built less than one mile north of the existing East Washington interchange, with the Project Study Report still due to be out in mid-2008.

That schedule slipped to August 2008, it was later reported, and officials later revised the timeline to the beginning of 2009.

The public works department, which is overseeing the planning for Rainier, noted in its most recent monthly update that the report had been submitted for Caltrans review in June of 2008, and that Caltrans had made its comments on the report in September of last year.

City Councilmember Mike Harris said he keeps hearing that the report’s release is close.

“In general, the pace is frustrating, but we have made some strides over time,” Harris said. “We are moving the ball forward.”

In October of last year, the council adopted a funding plan for Rainier that relies on traffic impact fees from new development, dedication of land from adjacent properties and the $10 million redevelopment contribution to pay for the project.

The exact cost will range between $38 million and $109 million, depending on which design alternative is selected.

In late 2008, a letter from Caltrans surfaced that seemed to cast doubt on the city’s preferred plan for Rainier — a diamond-style interchange estimated at $75 million.

The letter said that design may have “adverse effects” on the freeway, and suggested either not pursuing the project, building an undercrossing-only project or a more expensive system of frontage roads and ramps that connected the Rainier interchange with the one at East Washington.

City officials believe the use of auxiliary lanes — which would run between ramps on the south side of the Rainier interchange to ramps on the north side of Washington (including a new northbound onramp behind the Petaluma Plaza shopping center, now in the works) — would alleviate Caltrans’ concerns.

Such lanes, essentially an extra lane of the freeway in each direction along the stretch, would give merging drivers more space to mix with traffic in freeway lanes, and could be a way to address concerns about the less-than-one-mile spacing between the two interchanges, the city believes.

This week, Vince Marengo, the city’s public works director, met with Caltrans officials in Oakland but made no announcements about the project.

The department did state, however, that its design firm, Carter Burgess, has hired a transportation planning and consulting company “to assist the city in the coordination with Caltrans.”

The Walnut Creek firm of Grey, Bowen and Co. “will provide assistance to facilitate consensus between the city and Caltrans on the scope, limits and basic design features of the project,” the public works department stated in its monthly update.

The firm will also facilitate “Caltrans’ selection of the project alternative, approval of non-standard design features and approval of a new connection by the California Transportation Commission,” the department report said.

On its Web site, Grey Bowen said its “particular expertise” is the ability to combine transportation consulting with strategic project planning.

“We are able to understand complex policy approval processes while addressing difficult transportation and infrastructure problems,” the company states.

(Contact Corey Young at corey.young@arguscourier.com)